


Elize Goes To School

by The_Exile



Category: Tales of Xillia
Genre: Fandom5K Exchange, Gen, Humour, Mild Spoilers, Post-Game(s), School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 23:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14555931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Elize is determined to have a perfectly ordinary first day at school, despite the continued threat of monster attacks, being followed around by a magically animated, loud-mouthed, cat-phobic doll and still not having the best fine control over her prodigious spellcasting.





	Elize Goes To School

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tren/gifts).



\---- The day before school ----

"Okay, can we go over everything I've just asked you to do?" Elize folded her arms, her wide eyes solemn, face stony, "Especially the things you must NOT do, under any circumstances."

"You say that, but you're actually really nervous and you don't believe for a second that I or yourself can..."

The young elementalist casually summoned a gust of strong wind, shaped it mid-flow with graceful twists of her fingers as though she wielded a conductor's baton - it was a habit she'd picked up from her tutor, Rowen - then quickly flung it at the large, chequered purple and black, disturbing looking, floating, talking plush... thing. Before the arcanely animated toy could escape, the gale wrapped itself around the thing's sharp-fanged maw, closing off its ability to talk except for several mumbled syllables that sounded suspiciously like words Elise had heard Alvin say a few times while drunk, and that elegant, refined ladies did not use. Dragging the plushie back onto its matching purple velvet pillow, Elise smiled in satisfaction and wagged her finger at it.

"Now, Teepo, please listen a little closer, okay? Because I don't think you understood a word I just said," she told it, "We do not reveal our owner's darkest and most private secrets in front of the whole class. We do not come to life in front of the class at all, especially not suddenly bursting out of the backpack screeching swear words at the top of our voice. We stay still like a normal doll until the coast is clear, and under no circumstances do we sneak out and steal anything shiny or eat anyone's lunch."

The mumbled response was one of profound and utterly uncomprehending disappointment but the plushie's wide, dark eyes did not sway Elise, probably because they were creepy. 

"Furthermore, we will not say exactly what we think about the teachers where they can overhear us, even the scary shouty fascist lady or the man whose voice sounds a bit like a sheep," said Elize, "We are permitted to overhear people in case they are talking about us but this does not mean we are allowed to repeat any juicy gossip we hear in front of anyone else. I swear I'll find time during the day to discuss everything we hear and see, okay? School isn't going to be all day."

"But... but..." she sensed he was about to say something vaguely sensible, so she loosened the restraints enough to allow him to speak, "It's still a long time and you can't just stuff me in a sack! This is abuse! I'm a living thing and... and I'll tell Rowen!"

She sighed slightly overdramatically, "Teepo, I'm the only person who actually believes you're alive at all. You're still in a plushie's body. You don't need to eat and you don't feel pain. You'll be fine, I know you will!"

"But I get bored! I'll go crazy and lose control and then I won't be able to obey any of your orders!"

"Okay, okay, I'll keep the strap loose and you can go outside. But you have to promise me you'll keep out of sight and you won't play any pranks on the teachers or steal or eat or hide anything..."

"Huh, I thought you said school was going to be fun," he sniffed, shooting head-first into the air. She tried to pull him back down but was knocked off her feet by the sudden jerking motion.

"Do you want to get left behind altogether?" she tapped her feet.

"N... no, anything but that! Cats try to eat me when you're not there and... and... you'll forget about me, I know you will!"

"Oh, okay, you have a point about the cats, although I've heard you give as bad as you take," she frowned, "But I'll only be forbidden to take you with me by Rowen or by the teachers if you act up. Or one of Jude's scientist friends might see you and try to take you apart to see what makes you different to the the other plushies again. And of course I'm not going to forget about you, idiot. We've been together literally forever. Why would school suddenly make things different?"

"Because... because... one of the other kids told me all about it! Going to school means you're a big girl, and big girls are different to little girls, their toys aren't real and they don't talk to them. You'll have real best friends and you'll play with them instead and have real adventures!"

"Well, that's just for normal toys, duh! Ordinary toys need imagination to bring them to life. You do it on your own. You don't need me."

"I do! I don't have other friends. I'm the only one of me in the whole world!"

"Well, go out and make friends of your own, then. They don't have to be like you. The other kids say I'm different to them anyway, because I'm a weird loner with a cursed toy following her around. No, that wasn't a criticism of you," she glared at him before he could start wailing and spinning around in circles for the second night in a row, "I mean that they're idiots who don't know anything about us and you shouldn't listen to them. Our real friends - Jude and Alvin and Leia - would never say something like that! And anyway, Leia has a lucky black cat who she keeps in a handbag when she goes on a date, so big girls can have plushies!"

"I hate cats," Teepo sulked.

"If you're so worried I'll forget about you because of school, why not get involved?" she suggested, "You could take notes for me and help me remember stuff and even fetch books for me."

"That's cheating! The other kids won't have one, so it’s an unfair advantage!"

"Well, Rowen said the other kids got a head start on learning because they went to elementary school," explained Elize, "So you're my support animal, like that blind kid who has the dog. It's a responsible job, so you have to behave for once."

"I'm not an animal."

"You're not an animal. You're not a doll. Make up your mind what you are, or I'll let Jude's friends find out for us."

"No! Not that!"

"Okay, no scientists, no cats, no imprisonment, maybe an official support thing harness, but in return you'll be good and not be seen or heard by the others or cause them any kind of trouble?"

He nodded eagerly, but not before adding, "A hat, not a harness. And don't call me a thing."

“Okay, be quiet and help me dry and press my clothes for tomorrow,” she said. Freeing Teepo entirely from the gust of wind, she recalled it, altered its structure a little to make it gentler and warmer, then ran it across the pile of laundry. The wet clothes floated from the pile and dangled in mid-air, already drying a lot from flapping in the warm breeze. Teepo tested them and grabbed the dry clothes, sorting them into a pile so that could Elzie could hang up some more. Once they were all dry, Teepo helped her position the clothes iron and press the garments with it. She didn’t yet have a uniform and her neatest skirt and blouse had been scuffed during an incident involving Teepo, a cat and a muddy puddle yesterday. She thought she had better wash her socks and hair ribbons while she was at it so they would all match. First appearances were important, Rowen had told her, and the old man knew everything – about politics, military strategy, spellcasting, music and serving guests as a butler. With him helping her get to school tomorrow, she reassured herself, nothing could possibly go wrong.

\--- Setting off for school ---

 

To give him due credit, Teepo waited for all of two hours before bursting out of the backpack, screeching like a demon, covered in the remains of sandwiches, orange soda, yogurt and black ink. This may have been to avoid drawing Rowen's attention, though. Her retainer had disappeared off into the woods somewhere, probably to scout for monsters or to speak to his friend on the weird telephone thing. Said weird telephone thing had been given to him by someone from the Elympian Government, worked even though he didn't seem to have any cords leading anywhere and allowed him to talk to people all the way back in Elympos, specifically to some lady politician he had met during an interdimensional peace conference and who he never seemed to stop chatting to any more. He had a bad habit of dropping everything he was doing to talk to her if he thought it was in any way an emergency on her end - even if it put Elize in an embarrassing situation such as dealing with a Teepo incident on her own. 

"Teepo, what on Reize Maxia..." she gasped, lost for words. The other children were pointing and whispering, a couple of them shrieking or giggling. The existence of Teepo at least wasn't anything new to them, what with the 'cursed doll' story already having reached every child in Sharilton over the gossip grapevine. 

"What, you think it's MY fault you can't close the clips on a lunchbox properly? I've put up with having this stuff all over me ALL MORNING, and now the ink pot... this stuff is gonna stain, you know, we'll never get it off!"

"I... okay, but what exactly are you doing bursting out of there like that?" she demanded.

"Am I seriously the only person who sensed the monsters? They're all around us! Powerful ones, too!"

"What did the creepy thing just say about monsters?" demanded one of the other children.

"Are you sure? Where's Rowen?"

"Where's he always when he's supposed to be paying attention to what he's doing? Honestly, adult humans..."

"No guards around, either? There aren't supposed to be powerful monsters around the public footpaths anyway!" she shook her head.

"There aren't supposed to be monsters anywhere if all of this was really over, little lady, but I'm warning you, it's not!" remarked Teepo. His huge pointy mouth flapped up and down, almost entirely splitting his head in two every time he decided to shout. He bobbed up and down manically and twirled in circles, like a balloon caught in a hurricane. Elize felt magic welling up inside the artificial element generator buried deep in his stuffing. 

"No, don't attack! What are you even aiming at? Mind the other kids!" Elize cried out. Gathering her own will - Rowen said her raw magical reserves and mental strength were a prodigious amount for a young child - she channeled it into Teepo, stabilising and better directing his attack. With the return of the part of her that had been displaced into Teepo to make his consciousness, the rather fragmented aspects of her personality were now in perfect synchronisation and she felt a steady surge of confidence. This, she could do! She still couldn't cook without civilian casualties or hold a normal conversation or go a whole day without her doll coming to life and embarrassing her but she could do this.

"Everyone get behind me and stay calm!" she instructed. Being more terrified of the creepy doll girl in front of them than the potential monsters, most of them ignored her, until said monsters, very real and truly terrifying, burst out of the trees, one of them slicing through an entire tree trunk in its mindless rage. They looked somewhere between albino monkeys and bears, except bigger, and very wrong. Dangerous wild animals had always existed, Rowen told her, and they were tough to hunt, but when the balance of the elements went out of whack, that was when the true monsters began to appear - things that had red mist in their eyes, things that foamed in the mouth and never stopped until their prey was dead, that mostly just killed and destroyed whether they were hungry or not. 

The closest, largest beast pounced and was met with waves of fire that knocked it back and immolated it at the same time. Suddenly about four times the size, Teepo screamed his own battle cry and flung himself at one of them, assaulting it with giant gnawing teeth. Several of the children had now run away or hid behind Elize, although a couple of them had a small magical talent of their own or had been given hunting weapons just in case, and were helping out. Elize was forced to yell at a couple of her classmates to move out of the way as she followed up the fireball with a storm of wind, several hundred times as ferocious as the one she used to restrain Teepo and hopefully not capable of hitting him. If anything, he reinforced the spell, sending waves of energy into it through their psychic link. As the 'hidden' part of her with no inhibitions or concept of social conventions, Teepo was the more powerful spellcaster but the more chaotic and it was a constant effort not to let him just aim the spell at the kids and hope the wind knocked them away rather than dragging them in. 

Still, they were holding. Only barely, but if the other kids didn't panic and do anything stupid, if the adults actually paid enough attention to come to her rescue...

"Goodness me, what are those doing over here? They're not even native to this continent!" 

Elize looked over at Rowen, who had emerged from the trees, running in his usual long, measured strides, back perfectly straight, not the slightest bit as tired as an old man should be. He always seemed to be marking tempo in his head, his eyes slightly glazed over as he muttered about something he was always thinking about, something far into the future that only he could see. Drawing up close enough to the monsters to aim, he gracefully flicked one of his wrists and unleashed a volley of small missiles of pure magical force. For some reason, maybe a private joke, he always seemed to shape these like paper aeroplanes.

"Where were you?" Teepo screamed at him. Before he could fling himself at Rowen and try to chew on his head, Elize distracted him with a firm psychic order to finish opening up gates to shadowy realms that would pull the monsters into them and crush them with extreme gravity. One of the fiends jumped right at the old man and was casually skewered on a fluidly drawn rapier.

"I do apologise, very urgent business, another anti-Spyrite riot, don't you know - honestly, interdimensional politics tries to catch fire the moment your back's turned - and I certainly didn't expect powerful, displaced monsters to just randomly turn up! What IS happening with the world? We must visit Milla's shrine this instant!"

"Gramps, we supposed to be going to SCHOOL!" Teepo squawked, having devoured the last of the monsters. The rather bedraggled-looking children reappeared from their hiding places behind trees or under bushes.

 

\--- Morning Registration ----

"Now now, class, it's not nice to tell nasty tales about each other," the teacher warned them, frowning and tapping the desk with a long ruler. She was a scary-looking old lady as it was, and Elize could tell from her own battle experience and the teacher's posture how hard and fast she could probably swing that ruler if you annoyed her too much, "Monster attacks can and do happen to anyone, and we have no evidence to suggest they're anyone's fault but the monsters'."

"Actually, those were really unusual monsters, and Ellie is kinda worried that MFF!" Teepo's loud tirade was silenced by a hastily constructed shroud of wind that tightened around his mouth.

"No magic in the classroom," the teacher sighed, "Look, we've had our excitement for the day and I know its hard to settle down with some sort of strange animal in the classroom, but didn't I order you all to pretend it was a weird-looking dog?"

"But, Miss, dogs in the classroom are exciting too!" piped up one of the younger boys. The girl next to him giggled. 

"Indeed? Well, any dogs in the classroom who do anything exciting or otherwise disruptive, even so much as bark, have to go on a leash outside," she warned, glaring at Teepo. Elize knew from experience that Teepo could break free of a leash but she didn't want to say anything, just in case Teepo had forgotten this fact himself, as he seemed equally terrified of the teacher. He had gone quiet and was now bobbing up and down slightly lower and less enthusiastically than usual. 

 

\--- Finding her way around ---

After her introduction to the class, which she had found difficult due to the constant malicious whispering and giggling that she was well aware happened all across the classroom, she was relieved when the class dispersed for more formal lessons. She had been shown her coat and bag peg, her exercise books and pens, where to buy her uniform from in the shop. It was all difficult to remember and only made her more nervous. She was worried that the people who still gave her funny looks would try and mess about with her bag, so she persuaded Teepo to guard it. The doll's presence was accepted in the school fairly readily - she later found out that Rowen had written a note about Teepo to the headteacher. She was disappointed not to be given a chance to try and get on without the doll, though, and equally embarrassed that she hadn't been given any money to buy her uniform with, despite Rowen's obvious wealth now that he had entered the world of politics. He had insisted that having too much money about her person would get her just as much negative attention or possibly more. She had thought people might at least want to be friends with her if she had money for them but Rowen told her that this sort of friend was untrustworthy and would do more harm than good in the long run. 

 

\--- Lessons ---

One of the most important lessons at this expected stage in Elize's education was to learn to control any potential budding magical talent. She had argued that she already had enough experience both from her upbringing in the facility and her need to use it in real energency situations - neither of which she particularly wanted to think about but both of which could be drawn from if needed. Rowen had pointed out that she still had a lot to learn. Her fine control was still rather lacking, especially when it came down to a non combat situation that required a little more delicacy than setting her enemies ablaze. For instance, cooking. She was a notoriously bad cook anyway, having nothing resembling an ordinary domestic life, and it didn't help when the task of frying an egg tended to result in an entire cast iron frying pan being destroyed because she forgot not to use her military grade fire magic on it. When she grew up and had to do more household tasks for herself, especially once the world went back to normal (okay, so he had actually said 'if') and she had to deal with the changed responsibilities of peace time, her complete lack of utility magic skills would become a liability. Her second problem at the moment was her over-reliance on Teepo as a spellcasting focus. If the doll was ever damaged or stolen, she was suddenly very vulnerable. Not only did she need to learn how to grow a whole personality of her own, or at least have all of her personalities inside her own mind, but she needed to rely less on any kind of magical focus that might not always be to hand. It was a skill all mages had to learn at some point, Rowen reassured her - for a long time, he had needed his conductor's baton to cast properly but now it was just a handy prop.

Of course, Elize also needed to learn how to cook, as well as count, read, tell the time and all sorts of other everyday skills that she had picked up how to do, or at least fake, in certain situations but never properly learned the rules for. She knew very little local history or geography at all and all attempts to teach her how to sing or play an instrument failed spectacularly, even when she could persuade Teepo not to try and join in. Her physical training wasn't all that great either, as she relied on magic for most physical exertion such as running or lifting anything heavy. Most of the class were taller, stronger and faster than her. In short, she was learning that, despite her expectations, she wasn't all that talented at much except combat magic and persuading Jude or Alvin to do things for her. She had a lot to catch up on. 

She was, at least, a fast learner, and after the first day she already had a good idea of what was where on a map of Reize Maxia and could get the top off a jar without pulverising it. While she still sang like a distressed frog, she had at least persuaded Teepo that an enthusiastic second bad singer did not make the song sound better.

Another thing that she discovered was that as she began to attempt more ordinary things and have ordinary problems with them, she suddenly had things to talk about with the other children. A few of them still treated her like a much younger child, especially the girls who were already taller and more mature looking and, despite being only a couple of years older than her, seemed to be already practicing for raising a child of their own and kept mistaking her for a substitute baby. Other children were still scared of her and of Teepo. Then there were the children who just seemed intent on finding any opportunity to be mean to other children who showed the slightest signs of being weak or alone. Most of the other children had completely lost interest in her by the end of the day, much as they would any other awkward new girl.

\--- Going home from school ---

Rowen was supposed to have picked her up from school on the way home as well but Elize was surprised to be greeted by Leia. The old man had been called back to Elympos on urgent diplomatic business, the older girl explained, and Jude was treating a patient. Leia was supposed to be at college but it was nothing urgent. She seemed more interested in how Elize's first day at school had been, and in worrying about her being thrown off by Rowen not being there.

"It's okay, I don't expect Rowen to be in the least bit reliable," Elize chirped up, "And walking back home with you is fun. It's like having a big sister!"

Leia giggled, "I should warn you, I don't really know myself how people normally are with their younger sisters. My brother is more like a younger brother and I never see him these days anyway. Or maybe that's normal for brothers. You know, I need to get out more and meet people myself. There's going to be a field trip to Elympos soon, so maybe that'll be a good opportunity."

"We have field trips at school, or so I've been told. But with the monster situation this bad, the teacher isn't sure where we can safely go."

"I'm supposed to report on the rise in monster activity as a project," she sighed, "And I've got to actually be a normal reporter and not just go out there and bash the monsters with a stick myself."

"Sounds like my teacher. She says it's not normal to whisk eggs and flour together with Arrivederci," Elize frowned, "But I swear I've seen Milla do it. There were a lot of eggs in a very big bowl, though."

"I'm not sure you should be looking to Milia as an example of how a normal person would do anything," Leia told her. Then she frowned. Elize guessed that she'd probably remembered the main problem with this: if Melia was ever going to come back into this world in a recognisable form, she was certainly not going to be at leisure to do things like sit around answering Elize's endless questions.

“Talking of monster attacks, I heard that you were involved in one on your way to school,” said Leia, “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“I’m fine. The other kids are fine, too,” she said.

“You’ve actually checked, right?” the older girl frowned, “I’ve seen you hide your pain before, because you didn’t want the hassle and thought it would heal on its own. Then you suddenly started ranting and collapsed and I had to use our last Miracle Gummy. You’re not feeling light-headed? No hot flushes? No memory loss?”

“I’m learning my own healing magic,” Elize squirmed like another child would if she was being forced into smart clothes. She liked keeping her clothes neat and learning proper manners almost as much as Teepo liked messing up her clothes and throwing food at objects of his displeasure.

 

“You don’t remember anything else, do you, then?” she asked, “What kind of monsters they were, what was effective at driving them back, where they went after they ran away?”

“Um… I’d ask Rowen the technical stuff,” she muttered, giving an account of everything she remembered. Teepo chimed in with a few things he had caught sight of that she had missed. The doll had been uncharacteristically silent because Leia had passed him a large bag of chewy sweets. A lot of the silence was caused by the fact that nobody had given him anything to hold them with and he didn’t have hands, so his effort was taken up by levitating the sweets within range while also eating them and guarding them from imaginary threats. 

“Have you eaten the entire bag already?” Leia frowned at him.

“I have to eat a lot of food because Elize wants to eat it really but she’s worried about her weight and...” Teepo began to loudly explain, before a rock was summoned out of nowhere and smacked him on the head. 

“I only asked because I was going to meet Alvin soon and he said something about bringing back souvenirs from Elympos,” said Leia, “If you’re quiet and good, it might include food for you.”

“Oh, goody! We’ve been wondering how Alvin was doing!” remarked the doll, “Do you want to know what the latest rumours are about Elympos? I even overheard Rowen say...”

“Remember how that’s a state secret and you’ll be stuffed in a sack and thrown in the river if you tell anyone?” Elize reminded him, humming a jolly tune she’d heard in the playground. Teepo fell silent again apart from some rather unsavoury words that he’d probably also learnt from the other children but when the playground monitor’s back was turned.

\--- A surprise visit ---

Owing to a continuous stream of alternated threats and bribes, the relative calm lasted for as long as it took to get to Reize Harbour, at which point the doll suddenly gave off a noise not unlike the one he had made just before the monster attack. Elize remembered checking several times that all the containers in her bag were securely fastened and besides, he didn’t spring out of the bag covered in anything, so this fact was even more worrying. Both girls had gotten out their staves and were preparing to cast a particularly destructive combination spell on the first thing that came too close to them before they realised what had riled Teepo so much.

“CATS!” the doll screeched, sounding rather like a panicked cat himself. Elize sighed and looked around for the animals. Marksburg was a port town full of fish markets so she had expected Teepo to remember that it usually contained a fair number of cats. Except for the few times when Teepo was stupid enough to steal fish, the cats were usually much more interested in obtaining their own food than chasing the weird-smelling, noisy, floating thing. Then she realised what in particular had sparked Teepo’s ailurophobia.

“What’s up, Elize? Thought girls your age were crazy about cats these days,” Alvin called out.

“I think you’ve been lucky enough to see the rare phenomenon of Teepo’s own, original personality showing through,” explained Leia, who was helping to pull the doll back from his new quest to eat the head of the man who he had linked to the sudden appearance of the cats.

“Calm down, Teepo, those are just plushies,” explained Elize, before adding, “Normal plushies that don’t move or talk or set people on fire. … That’s right, isn’t it, Alvin? Elympian plushies don’t do that?”

“Some dolls have mechanical motors in them, and the army’s just invented a new type of flamethrower, but nobody’s thought to combine the two yet,” Alvin scratched the back of his head, “Although if you want something commissioned, I have contacts...”

“No supplying children with incendiary weapons,” ordered Leia.

“Can I have the fluffy finger one? He’s so cute!” Elize reached for a large plush cat dangling by an impressive-sized bushy tail from the side of Alvin’s pedlar cart.

“Elly, no!” Teepo gasped in shock, as though she’d just agreed to sign her soul over to a demon, “Cats are the actual death of all that is good and right in the world, do you not understand? We cannot have idols of them close by in case we inadvertently summon them!”

“Alvin, can this really summon kitties?” she held it out to him.

“… I have some catnip spray in one of the pockets.”

“I tell you, you’re dooming us all!” wailed Teepo. 

Leia smiled. All in all, Elize’s first day at school seemed to have gone well. Nobody was dead and nothing was on fire, meaning that most of her worst fears about the occasion were unfounded. She was fairly sure that Elize had truthfully confided in her ‘big sister’ - not that you can hide much when your id lived inside a loud-mouthed animated doll – which meant that the secret mission given to her by Rowen would be a success once she safely reported back to him. Now that Alvin had distracted Elize, it should be a simple matter to nip round the corner and use the communication device he had given her.

She briefly wondered where Jude had really gone.


End file.
